It started about 6 years ago when I clocked a recurring narrative in the NZ media that went something along the lines of “Parents to blame for obese kids.”

This narrative didn’t sit right with me because blaming the rents seemed to ignore the cost-of-living reality in this country – that healthy food is expensive food.

>> In 2019, 1-in-5 Kiwi kids lived in households that were food insecure with poor access to the nutritionally-rich foods required for their development. That rate has now crept up to 1-in-4 💔.

Why is it that a country that can feed c.8x its population is unable to feed its people? Apparently there are plenty of complicated reasons why (although personally I find that complexity is the mother of obfuscation).

What is certain, however, is that people on low incomes in NZ cannot always afford to buy healthy food to nourish their bodies. They can only afford to buy food to satisfy their hunger.

I asked myself what I’d do if given a choice between feeding my kids unhealthy food or not feeding them at all. I would feed them every time.

And that was the moment that I decided to test exactly how cheaply I could feed people a healthy lunch / dinner.

At the time I was living abroad doing other things, but today have Bird in the Hand.
The concept? Healthy, rotisserie chicken 🍗 🍗 takeaways for less $$$ than fish’n’chips, McDonald’s and KFC.

The go-to-market, a purpose-built container kitchen at 139 Colombo Street, Christchurch.

It’s not just me. I’m honoured to be joined by two partners / investors, George Inwood and former All Blacks Captain, Reuben Thorne, whose first act of business was to push the prices lower and lower for launch because they understand what Bird in the Hand is:

🐔 - It is an experiment to see how cheap is possible, and whether the collective buying power of local neighbourhoods can be harnessed to unlock value through volume. Kind of like a consumer cooperative.

🖕 - It is our attempt to stick it to the supermarket duopoly. At the end of the day, we can't compete with them on cost of raw ingredients, but we can fight them on convenience, taste and value, because we believe that:

🐔 🫴 A Bird in the Hand is worth two in the bush 🐔🐔 🌳 .

Something that is especially true for the wage earners working two jobs.

And why rotisserie chicken? See Chicken for Geeks. But please follow Bird in the Hand to find out more, including the ‘What’ and ‘How’ behind the business – The secondary mission of Bird in the Hand is to inspire Kiwis into small (or larger) businesses of their own, using it as a real-life case study on how to go from problem, to solution, investment and launch.

Because entrepreneurship is the mother of solutions.

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- Sam